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The Heiresses (Las Herederas)

Chela (Ana Brun) and Chiquita (Margarita Irun) have been a couple for decades, lifelong members of Paraguay’s wealthy elite. Their money now gone, they spend their days selling their furniture and silver, until Chiquita, the more garrulous of the two women, is unexpectedly sent to prison. Left alone to cope with solitude and incipient poverty, Chela is on the brink of despair – until, suddenly, a new option develops.

Anchored by two extraordinary, magnetic performances (Ana Brun won the Best Actress Prize at the Berlin Film Festival, with the Critics’ Prize going to the film itself), director Marcello Martinessi acknowledges the influence of Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s films, describing The Heiresses as “a coming-of-age film for a 60-year-old woman.” In Spanish with English subtitles. (97 min.)